Hooked on targets
Ministers can't think of a fourth way
IN A speech on July 4th, Tony Blair admitted that the government too often came across as managerialist and technocratic. Nowhere has it displayed these characteristics more than in its obsession with targets to improve the public services. Speaking on the same day, Patricia Hewitt, the trade and industry secretary, accepted there had been too many targets and said that delivering better public services was not like delivering pizzas.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Hooked on targets”
From the July 12th 2003 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
The slow death of a Labour buzzword
And what that says about Britain’s place in the world
Britain’s Supreme Court considers what a woman is
At last. Britons had been wondering what those 34m people who are not men might be
Can potholes fuel populism?
A new paper looks at one explanation for the rise of Reform UK
Are British voters as clueless as Labour’s intelligentsia thinks?
How the idea of false consciousness conquered the governing party